Lipstick Storm

This painting, Lipstick Storm, was a conscious work about glamourous colors. Inspired by fashion and what I considered fashionable: lipstick, neon lights, velour, banquettes. All ideas vaguely derivative of glamourous nightclubs in New York in the 1940’s, and the women that frequented them. In the same vein, I also always loved this sort of humid blue-purple color. Reminiscent of vintage, velour-lined fragrance boxes from Guerlain.  Here, the thicker stripes were dense, overpainted purplish-blue color fields. Punctuated by thinner, neon-pink stripes. 

Ultimately, I was conscious how I was exploring different ways to broaden emotional territories of my painting. From matters of the present to the past. The result here was something about cultural/ emotional references being visually ‘blended’—in my imagination, at least. But I knew this game had only meaning for the painter, while the viewer was—is—free to construe something else. 

–STELIOS author of The Oculus